


Dirt

by Nerve_Itch



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Broken Bones, Buried Alive, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, No Smut, Premature Burial, Protective Hannibal, Recovery, Sickfic, Trauma, Whump, a complete absence of anything more intimate than hand-holding, and recover from them, and the methods used to cope with them, excessive hurt, makeshift medical procedures, non-specified timeframe, oblique piss references, only suffering, really graphically described hurt, terrible things happening to Will Graham, this entire thing is a hymn to violently inflicted injuries, unless we count the invasive treatment of compound fractures, will in the woods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 21:49:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14941980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerve_Itch/pseuds/Nerve_Itch
Summary: “Will, I need you to tell me what happened.”Hannibal waits as patiently as the circumstances allow, but Will doesn’t speak. Will’s answer is cryptic, laid out for Hannibal in ugly clues. It’s etched into his skin, and pungent about the remaining shreds of clothing still clinging to him.It's in the footprints etched in purple into his side, and the trail of grit and soil, leading from Hannibal’s car, through the house and now smudged into the bed Will is sitting on, barely held together. The answer is something monstrous, and Hannibal will pull it from him, eventually.





	Dirt

“Will, I need you to tell me what happened.”

Hannibal waits as patiently as the circumstances allow, but Will doesn’t speak. Will’s answer is cryptic, laid out for Hannibal in ugly clues. It’s etched into his skin, and pungent about the remaining shreds of clothing still clinging to him. It’s in the splinter of bone breaking through forearm, and in the footprints etched in purple into his side, and the trail of dirt and soil, leading from Hannibal’s car, through the house and now smudged into the bed Will is sitting on, barely held together. The answer is something monstrous, and Hannibal will pull it from Will, eventually.

Will tries to speak – he tries until his throat burns and his chest wall rattles, but he can’t make a sound. He’s aware of Hannibal’s concern. It swells around him, grows arms and tries to reassure him, tells him to slow his breathing, and this is how he knows things must be bad, for Hannibal to appear so _worried_. Will tries to speak, again, and this time something crawls in his oesophagus. Something tickles at his uvula, and all of him clenches with a cough that won’t, _can’t_ come out. There are muddy handprints on Hannibal’s sheets from where he’s been gripping them and somehow, Hannibal doesn’t seem bothered by this.

Will coughs, and something claws at his lungs, grips them until he can’t breathe. He’s never felt his ribs so clearly and he wants them out of his body, away from the soft parts of him. He thinks he’s trying to tear them out, but he can’t make his arms move, not without light exploding behind his eyes.

Will spits, and then there’s dirt on the floor and grit on his teeth. Something wriggles near his feet, and still Hannibal doesn’t chide him for the mess he’s making. Instead, he lays a hand on Will’s head – the one place that isn’t screaming out with busy nerve endings – and strokes. He hates this. Hannibal should be livid. _He should be disgusted_.  

Hannibal brushes mud from Will’s eyelashes, trying to appraise all he can from the tremble before him. Will is no one’s but his to harm, and yet.

 




 

The woodland floor is too soft for leverage. His hands sink into it, knuckles red, wet and stinging. There’s no centre of gravity to hold onto; he’s being swallowed, then he’s turning, being rolled and dragged and yanked, cracking under heavy boots. He’s reaching, tearing at the nearest ankle. Anything to bring at least one of them down. Fell him like a tree. A snap. Then, a hot whiteness, and screams stuffed back into his mouth.

 

   *

 

“How long was I gone?” Will asks. There’s lidocaine in his wounds, and a hot wet towel mopping leaves from his skin. He can still taste dirt, and cannot fight the knowledge that it will be ground into his skin more deeply than Hannibal can scrub clean. His head feels like a furnace.

“You left here on Friday evening,” Hannibal tells him, rinsing the towel in the sink and frowning when it retains its brownish hue. “It is now Sunday morning.”

Will doesn’t know what to say, and every time he speaks his voice feels like it’s crawling. He can’t get enough breath without each prong of his ribs reaching for the soft parts of his lungs. All he says in reply is, “oh.”

Hannibal bites back a response that may betray the full breadth of his worry, settling instead for wiping Will’s face, until he’s satisfied that the darkened stains that remain are the blooms of burst capillaries, and not the detritus of the forest he’d plucked him from.

“A timely resurrection,” Hannibal says calmly. “Had I found you any later, I doubt there would have been any use in stealing you back from the ground.”

Will doesn’t think he’s been fully excavated, yet.

 

   *

 

He’s taken a kicking before, but not like this _. If you hadn’t tried to fight them, it wouldn’t be this bad_. His breaths can’t keep up with the impact against skin, percussive and uncoordinated. It’s brutal but it’s quick, or he blacked out at some point in the middle. It stills when he’s face down in the dirt, boneless, something hot trickling down the back of his neck.

 

   *

 

“Raise your arms for me,” Hannibal instructs.

Will doesn’t hear him, not clearly. There’s something in his ears, still. He thinks of branches, twigs and tendrils, and imagines himself as a tree. Trees don’t move on command.

“Will,” Hannibal says, frustration seeping into his voice. “Your arms, please.”

Will reads the words on Hannibal’s curled lips, remembering that he has limbs, that he is not formed of bark, nor soil. The awareness of being made flesh raises fresh agonies inside him and his breath shortens, weakens into a thin panic. Hannibal cups his face, holds his temple in his fingers and massages until Will tells himself that his breaths are simply sap, rising and falling through him.

Hannibal sighs. He takes Will’s right hand in his, careful not to disrupt the raw gloss of red on his swollen knuckles, and prompts again. At last, Will does; holds the arm outstretched with a shake. Hannibal palpates the skin from wrist to shoulder, determining it to be unbroken. The left arm is altogether worse; radial bone breaching the mid-point of his forearm, and a stretch of wound likely harbouring more infection than Will’s immune system is equipped to take on alone. The splint he’s placed on it is makeshift; an emergency measure, until the rest of the damage can be assessed.

Will is no longer present in his skin. This time, Hannibal allows him the reprieve, and works instead on moving Will’s arm from the elbow to the purpled smudge of his shoulder. Will returns, whimpers, folding backwards. A dislocation, Hannibal can treat more efficiently. He follows the mottled path of a seatbelt print, vivid from chest to shoulder. This injury causes him more anger than the others so far; there’s something accidental to it. It’s undirected. Will’s car is no receptacle for his retribution, and so he catalogues this one, the hues of violet and Will’s tearful reaction at his joints being reassembled, as something altogether less beautiful.

Will reaches for him, then. Hannibal lets him, though he cannot do more in return than hold his hand and place a soft kiss across his closed eyelids. Anything more would break him further, and Hannibal is not good with delicate things.

 

  *  

 

Headlights from the pickup truck glaring off the rear-view mirror. Skidding wheels, and three silhouettes lit up behind him. The first shunt into his bumper, the jolt. These roads are meant to be empty, and this car is meant to feel safer. Swerving, and the momentum building beyond his grasp of the steering wheel. Crumpling metal, trees speeding closer. A splinter across the windshield, and footsteps.

 

   *

 

There’s metal sticking into Will’s arm. He can tell it’s sticking into it, instead of out of it, because he knows he doesn’t have the strength in him to grow steel from his bones. He feels like sand under the tide. It’s bedded in, hinges and beams, like a pier standing firm against the swell of his skin. Hannibal tells him to be careful, not to knock it lest it offsets the bone again.

“It will hurt,” Hannibal tells him, as though anything that has happened so far hasn’t. It’s awful, this joyless concern. Hannibal makes more sense when he’s revelling in the carnage, or creating it.

“Tell me how it happened,” Hannibal asks, and Will feels his eyes glazing, and listens to the crackling of static that plays instead of memory.

 




 

The gaping maw of earth, lit up by flashlights. The vertigo of being held above it, of too many hands keeping him elevated, and then of the cold air clogging with wet soil around his mouth. An oblique view of trunks of legs disappearing into formless bodies above. Sodden mud, roots and detritus piling around him, filling him until his ears packed with creeping, moving earth, sodden leaves falling across his eyes. Pretending to be dead, and thinking he’s convinced himself more than the men stamping the ground above him.

 




 

The light of the day fades, and the only task remaining is to sleep. Moving Will is proving a challenge; Hannibal has many tools available to him, but a stretcher is not one of them. He’s yet to find a position for Will that doesn’t put some strain on the torn and broken parts of him; there is no space on nor inside his skin that is without pain. He scoops him up as gently as he is able, and carries him to the freshly made up bed. Will protests, but it’s an indirect complaint. Gasps, stuck in his throat, gritted moans. Hannibal would be furious that he wasn’t the cause of such thorough suffering, but by now he is simply too exhausted. His wrath can wait.

Laid out on his back, Will contains his distress as best he can. He’s sweating, coursing at a steady 102 degrees, and he’s shivering. Hannibal suspects pneumonitis, hears it in the rattles of breath and the rivulets of sweat, but Will is exhibiting too many symptoms to unpick one from the other. Hannibal is unused to such a deficit of clarity, but for now he is settling simply on Will not dying. It’s this that prompts him to withhold opiates from the wretch beneath him; he daren’t risk the softening of his too-thin breathing, or the quietening of a warning system that may alert him to as yet undiscovered damages. Will is resilient, and pain is his familiar.

The neediness, though, is new. Hannibal has never felt so essential. Were his own muscles not worn down from the volume of work Will’s situation has created for him, he’d be taking delight in the soft crackle-voiced request for a cold flannel. As it is, he is gracious in his efforts, though Will may be too delirious to appreciate it.

The tone shifts when Hannibal drapes a duvet across Will’s glossed and tired skin. Will fights it, though his efforts are woeful; scratching against the soft fabric, floundering. Before Hannibal can tell him that he needs to keep warm, Will’s soft voice grows volume, and he’s howling, eyes streaming, the stuttering of sobs and panic.

“ _Get it off_.”

Hannibal watches a moment longer, less for enjoyment than simple curiosity.

“ _Please_ ,” Will says, protracted and breathless and yanking at a thread of sympathy Hannibal was hitherto uncertain he possessed.

Hannibal obliges, fans the air around Will as reassurance that he is no longer submerged, no longer covered or confined. Hannibal promises that he will not allow him to be buried a second time, and turns the heating up instead.

 

   *

 

The air around him is too hot. It rustles, smothers, creeps around his nostrils and into his mouth, and so little of it is getting into his lungs. _He’s dead_. There’s pressure on the side of him; he’s barely covered. If he moves now, they’ll know. And if he stays, and right now he’s staying because he doesn’t think he _can_ move, then he’s going to suffocate, or choke, or if he’s lucky, he can simply pass out from the pain.

 

   *

 

“Stop,” Will says, and it sounds familiar to him, as though this word has been his companion for some time.

Hannibal continues to press on the too-tender skin around Will’s leg, each time sending a wave of hot, roiling nausea through Will, a lurch that starts in his gut and simpers out at his fingertips. He can’t throw up. _He mustn’t._

Hannibal doesn’t stop, and Will doesn’t expect him to.

“This would be easier to diagnose,” Hannibal says, the softness and concern now fully eclipsed with a practical kind of rage, “if you were to tell me how it happened.”

Will thinks of the convex side of a shovel, and of swinging.

“They didn’t want me to run away,” Will says simply.

Hannibal is far from satisfied by this, pulling a wrap of bandage and levering it against Will’s toes. Will doesn’t want to feel _wrapped_ , _confined_. He tries to kick out, and can’t. 

“Who were they, Will?”

Hannibal’s anger is still undirected, a formless, looming presence. Will does not wish to bear the brunt of it, though he doesn’t know what help he can be, like this. Who they were doesn’t matter, to Will. Knowing who did this won’t knit his shinbone back together, it won’t unbruise his skin or cool his fever.

It feels hopeless, until it dawns on Will that perhaps, Hannibal may need to heal from this too.

 




 

Sinking light in the forest, the muting of colours. The distant whir of a passing truck. The thing he’s crawled out of, it’s barely a grave. Not enough to hold him, and perhaps not enough to kill him after all. Standing isn’t happening; there’s no feeling in his legs, and then there’s too much feeling. Blinking, and the light is almost gone. Hands sinking into wet ground. Blinking again, and the forest is pitch dark. His car. If he can reach his car, he’ll stand a chance. And so, he crawls, one arm as a lever, legs dragging.

 

    *

 

The soup Hannibal serves Will is lukewarm, and without texture. To Hannibal, it’s an embarrassment of a dish, but Will has thus far balked at anything with discernible ingredients. Hannibal watches shaking fingers draw the spoon upwards, the liquid almost dancing before it reaches Will’s mouth. It’s not nearly enough to sustain his recovery, but it’s progress.

“Why do you think they wanted to hurt you, Will?”

Will closes his eyes, swallows, and winces. _Why does anyone do anything_?

“I guess I have that effect on people,” Will says without emotion, as Hannibal guides his hand to the bowl in front of him.

Hannibal can’t discern whether this Will’s first attempt at levity since he returned, or if trauma has simply purged him of coherence.

“You fought them,” Hannibal continues. If dinner is already ruined by the dullness of the meal, then there’s little harm in dragging the conversation into ugly territory. “Perhaps you angered them? Why would you have done that?”

Will appears to be closing up before Hannibal’s eyes. The spoon sits limp between his fingers and his eyes adopt a glaze. It’s an unkind tactic, Hannibal knows, but he is despairing of methods to claw information from Will.

“I fought what was happening,” Will corrects, defensive. He pauses to swallow another half spoon of broth, conscientiously suppressing a grimace. “Until I couldn’t.”

“You are more capable than most,” Hannibal says. “Perhaps they recognised that in you?” He grips Will’s hand more closely, guiding more of the protein-rich infusion to his mouth. Will doesn’t resist the infantilising gesture, nor the hot crush of his knuckles in Hannibal’s hand.

“I don’t think they noticed. Or cared,” Will says, and at last, this is something close to tangible. It’s motive, or lack thereof. A suggestion that Will was singled out for reasons other than his nature; something as accidental and mundane as mere circumstance.

“I’m healing,” Will adds, though he’s only on his fourth spoonful of soup and at this pace, it will be dawn again before he’s finished. Had his throat not been so ravaged by the grit he’d swallowed, Hannibal would have resorted to a feeding tube by now. He’s not ruling it out.

“It happened,” Will says, “I want it to stop happening. What good is knowing _why_?”

Hannibal suggests that giving voice to the ordeal will speed the recovery, and Will expresses his refutation in icy silence.

Tomorrow, he’ll learn more.

 

 *

 

The faces of the men contort in the headlights; mouths opening, shouting, coaxing. Seatbelt jammed against the glovebox and shoulder burning against the seatback. The woods, a darkened haven ahead, and the advancing silhouettes, now vivid, reeking, and coming for him.

 

 *

 

It takes time for Will to embrace the wheelchair. It uses a sizeable measure of patience, trial and painful errors to drag himself into it each time, and he has yet to complete the task without cursing. The cast of his leg knocks against the metal footplates, the armrests catch on his rib cage, enough that his chest recoils at the thought of dragging himself into it, and once he’s nestled into the damn thing, he still can’t do anything. It’s an illusion of independence, and all the more cruel for the taunt of it. There’s no motor, no hand dial. With his left arm bolted and held close to his chest, the wheels are unsteerable.

Despite this, it’s at least more pleasant than being carried, and a more welcome challenge than crawling, in those long hours when Will is left to fend for himself. He wonders if Hannibal would consider adding pulleys, grab rails or wall hooks to the house, to ease his movements through the corridors. If Will’s need to feel capable again could stand greater than Hannibal’s love of aesthetic. Or, greater than Hannibal’s enjoyment at having Will entirely dependent on him, to steer him to the garden, to the bathroom, to the bed.

Will doesn’t ask.

 

 *

 

Will’s fever breaks, spurred on by antibiotics and a rigorous routine of antiseptics, disinfectants, and anaesthesia of varying strengths.

Hannibal had believed, some time before this, that he could never tire of the many ways Will could share the beauties of his distress. Now, worn to the nerves from lack of sleep and the sheer labour of keeping him functioning, Hannibal concedes that he would prefer some respite, for the both of them, and so he grants Will access to his morphine.

Though the chair may be a necessity for some months yet, he is relieved to see the reassuring pallor of Will’s skin re-emerging through the fading contusions, and for humour and bite to creep into their interactions. Physical contact that isn’t solely therapeutic is returning in increments, in soft touches, fingers on neck, breaths in hair. They speak very little of what took place, but Will has told him enough, now; the colour of the pick-up truck that ran him off the road, an approximation of their appearances, and oblique references to their characters. Will is right; knowing why is of no import, truly. This isn’t something for Behavioural Science to analyse, it’s something for Hannibal to fix, as he has fixed everything else thus far.

He leaves Will in the front room, reclining amongst the softest pelts and pillows he could gather. There’s a soft smile on his face, looking for the first time as though he believes in his own right to recovery.

 

  *

 

Hannibal’s shirt is streaked with blood, though his buoyant demeanour indicates that very little, if any, is his own.

“What happened?” Will asks, resting his book in the blankets beside him.

Hannibal is radiant, teeth in his smile and light in his eyes.

“I’d very much like to show you, if you feel up for a drive?”

Will would very much prefer to remain as he is, swallowed by a haze of opiates and blankets. However, for all Hannibal has done to bring him back to life, there is a tremendous debt of gratitude. He suspects that whatever he is shown is something integral to Hannibal’s recovery from his own ordeal, and so he agrees.

 

  *

 

The road is infinitely less daunting in daylight, and the traffic on it is sparse; no more than three vehicles have passed them in the forty-minute drive. Will’s mouth is drying and his leg can’t stretch out far enough in the front seat, not without pressing the bandage up into the skin of his thigh, but he refrains from voicing his discomfort. Hannibal has soothed him through plenty, and now it’s his turn to attend to Hannibal’s needs. The car rolls carefully into a small roadside clearing, and Hannibal wastes no time unpacking the wheelchair from the back seat. He’s virtually magnanimous in the way he lifts Will into it, with a flourish of care and softness.

“It isn’t the exact spot,” Hannibal explains once Will is settled, pushing him through undergrowth to the focus of the excursion, “but I thought it would be more accessible.”

Will tries to offer thanks, that Hannibal has elected a wheelchair-friendly space in the forest in which to erect a murder tableau, but the words don’t fully reach his mouth.

The three shapes arranged before him have the appearance of gargoyles, faces distorted into monstrosities. Only the heads and the shoulders are above ground, and Will knows these faces, intimately, from the fractures of memories he is still trying to expunge. He’s not certain that this fresh overlay of images will be a comfort to him when his brain turns in on itself, with the pulpy ropes of entrails wrapped in loops around their necks, tethering them to the dirt. But, he appreciates the effort.

“Seeing the perpetrator of one’s misery laid open and harmless can be very therapeutic,” Hannibal says. He’s proud, satisfied, and _calm_ at last.

“I agree,” Will says, the stench of rot and viscera evoking more memories than he is prepared to embrace here and now. “And is it working?” he asks.

Hannibal smiles, warm and sincere.

“I feel infinitely better,” Hannibal agrees. “And though it may yet take some months, I am confident that you will too.”

It’s good enough, for now.

 

 *

 


End file.
